Erika Wright. Reading for Health: Medical Narratives and the Nineteenth-Century Novel (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2016) Reviewed by Dr Jane Darcy, Department of English, University College London Erika Wright begins Reading for Health with a timely reminder for Victorianists, quoting Ruskin’s argument about the dangerous temptation of the ‘phenomenon of the sick-room’ for […]
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The Screening Room: old age, loneliness and cinema
Loneliness, and Belonging in the Age of Photoshop Short film, directed by Amjad Abu Ala Review by Professor Robert C Abrams, Professor of Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York There is a world of life portrayed in the few brief minutes of the poignant but joyous short film, ‘Studio’, by Amjad Abu Ala (in Arabic […]
The Reading Room: Salka Valka
Salka Valka by Halldór Laxness: she needs to be alone Reviewed by David S. Baldwin, Professor of Psychiatry Clinical and Experimental Sciences Academic Unit Faculty of Medicine, University of Southampton, United Kingdom Email: dsb1@soton.ac.uk Born in Reykjavík in April 1902, Halldór Guðjónsson (he changed his name to Halldór Kiljan Laxness in 1923) […]
The Reading Room: The Other Side of Silence
The Other Side of Silence: A Psychiatrist’s Memoir of Depression by Linda Gask. Vie Books, 2015 Reviewed by Dr Lilian Hickey There is a shocking, but humane and tender poetry in George Eliot’s lines in Middlemarch which refer to the deafening ‘roar’ of life that might lie ‘on the other side of silence’ in our […]
The Screening Room: a review of the Lebanese film Ghadi
Music overcoming disability – Ghadi, Lebanon, 2013, directed by Amin Dora Reviewed by Dr Reem Gaafar, a Sudanese doctor, writer, filmmaker and graphic designer A special screening will take place at the Polish Cultural Centre, 238 King Street, Hammersmith, London W6 0RF, Sapphire Room, 2nd Floor, at 8pm Friday 3rd June 2016. To book […]
Medicine Unboxed: Students 2016
Deadline: Midnight Sunday 3 July 2016 Medicine Unboxed 2016 is on the theme of Wonder and takes place in Cheltenham on 19-20 November 2016. Medicine Unboxed: Students brings together students of the arts, health and medicine to present their work and thinking at Medicine Unboxed. Applications are invited for a 10-minute presentation at Medicine […]
Art, Life and Illness
David Marron: Encounters Columba Quigley David Marron, Geras 3, 2013. Image courtesy of the artist and GV Art, London I was fortunate to catch this exhibition, held over the May Bank Holiday weekend at Lumen Studios, The Crypt, St John on Bethnal Green. David Marron is both an artist and a paramedic. The exhibition […]
The Screening Room: Cannes Film Festival Preview
Cannes, films and Medicine The forthcoming Cannes Film Festival (11-22nd May 2016) is described by its director Thierry Fremaux as ‘A celebration of cinematographic art’ http://www.festival-cannes.fr/en.html. If you are lucky enough to be attending the glittering, entertaining and thought-provoking extravaganza, here are five films in the official selection exploring the lives of patients and […]
The Reading Room: When Breath Becomes Air
Hope, Oncology and Death Seamus O’Mahony When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. London: The Bodely Head, 2016. Paul Kalanithi was nearing the end of his neurosurgical training at Stanford when aged thirty-six, he was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. He had never smoked. He was referred to an oncologist specializing in […]
A little Danish mermaid and other stories (of rare diseases)
A reflection on Sofie Layton’s Under the Microscope by Giovanni Biglino (Bristol Heart Institute, Bristol, UK) The voice of a little girl and the sunlight filtering through layers of green batik – a series of coral-like structures representing real heart models displayed under bell jars – anatomical drawings – and the story of […]